Tara Janzen - Loose And Easy

It was plenty expressionistic, though. He could give it a perfect ten for expressionism.

“Very cool,” he said, and yeah, he knew that was about a low-end one on the art appreciation verbalization scale, but for all that he’d posed for Nikki, he’d never really picked up the lingo.

“Cool?” Esme sounded a little disappointed in his opinion.

He was, too. Truly.

“Yeah, cool. Very, uh, colorful. It kind of looks like Solange, with the blue and all, and the curves, and that thicker swath of gray straightaway. The red could be her taillights.”

“Solange, your car?”

“Yeah, very curvy, very female, I guess, when I look at it a little more. I never heard of Jakob Meinhard, but the painting looks like it could be worth quite a lot of money.” He was telling her the truth. The long slinky lines and the colors reminded him of the Cyclone, but as far as opinions went, that one probably didn’t have many redeeming qualities either-a fact she conveyed quite succinctly with her closing of the painting into the case.

“It is,” she said.

And there he was, back in high school, in another classic Esme Alden moment-in over his head.

“The word masterpiece alone implies a certain value.” That sounded a little better-maybe.

Hell, if she wanted to talk art, she needed to be talking to Hawkins. Superman could even outtalk Nikki about all the “this and that” of art, and he’d married a woman who owned art galleries, for crying out loud.

“Yes, it does.”

He heard her snap the case shut.

“How much could you get for it on the open market?” he said, cutting to the chase. There probably weren’t any additional redeeming qualities in that question either, but he wanted to know.

“There is no open market, per se, for works of this quality if they’re stolen,” she said, sliding the case back into the leather messenger bag.

Fair enough.

“How much on the black market?”

“Half a million.”

Quite a hell of a lot of money, just like he’d said.

“And if it wasn’t stolen and could be bought legitimately?” he asked.

“One point five to two million.”

He didn’t whistle at that. He just kept driving.

Two million dollars, sitting in his car.

He’d known life was going to be interesting, being back in Denver, being part of SDF, or at least almost part of SDF, but, man, he’d come up with Esme Alden and a two-million-dollar painting all on his own. And any girl dealing in two million dollars’ worth of art had done damn well by herself, her screwup dad aside. Private investigations on that scale were a few cuts above following errant spouses around with a long lens, or tracking down the guy who hadn’t paid his construction lien.

The sudden vibration of his phone had him reaching in his pocket to pull it out. He automatically looked at the screen before he answered.

“Skeets, wazzup?”

“General Grant, Johnny-boy. He’s here, up on The Beach with a bottle of Scotch.”

Johnny sat up a little straighter behind the wheel. Oh-kay.

He might not have been an official member of the SDF team yet, but he’d been working at Steele Street and living in the annex at the Commerce City Garage for almost ten years, and of the few times that General Grant had come to Denver, he’d only gotten plastered up on The Beach once, when he’d come to mourn J. T. Chronopoulos, one of the original chop-shop boys and one of the original members of SDF.

“Did someone die?” It was a hard question, an awful question, the kind a guy felt in his gut, but with a few of the operators out on missions, anything was possible, and the hard questions always needed to be asked first.

“No. I ran everybody down as soon as I realized where Grant had gone and that the Scotch was missing from the guest suite,” Skeeter said. “He’s called a meeting for the A.M., and he wants everyone here.”

“Red Dog and Travis-” Johnny started, but she cut him off.

“They won’t make it. Senators rule, SDF drools when it comes to fact-finding tours of Third World countries. They stay put.”

“Smith?” C. Smith Rydell was the other operator currently deployed.

“Arriving at Peterson in a couple of hours. Everyone else is either driving in or flying in before dawn, and we’re all meeting up here. Your name is on the guest list.”

The news set him back for a second. He’d expected it, sure, but to hear it.

Hoo-yah … he grinned-except if Grant was here to deliver good news, what was up with the Scotch?

“Yeah, I’m wondering the same damn thing,” Skeeter said, reading his mind-business as usual with SDF’s spooky long-legged blonde. He’d spent enough time with her under the hood of a car not to be surprised when she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

“Exit,” Esme whispered, pointing up ahead to an exit ramp.

He nodded and pulled over into the right-hand lane.

“Who all’s at the garage?” The building at 738 Steele Street had thirteen floors, seven of which housed cars, mostly American muscle from the sixties and early seventies.

“The jungle boy and I have been working on Mercy all night, and Superman is here.”

“And the meeting?”

“Eight A.M., everybody on board, front and center. Creed and I will be hosting. The coffee will be Jamaican, hot, and strong, and the doughnuts will be fresh from Sugarbombs.”

Excellent. Everything was excellent. He and Skeeter had been living on Sugarbomb doughnuts since he’d gotten home, and Creed’s coffee could stand in a corner without a cup, which was just the way Johnny liked it.

And the timing was perfect. Eight A.M.-plenty of time for him to do the Bleak deal for Esme and still get to Steele Street with time to spare. No one at SDF need ever know he’d spent the night skirting some pretty sketchy edges.

“I’ll be there at seven-thirty,” he said.

“Good. Are you still at the Blue Iguana?”

“Not quite.”

That gave her a little pause.

“Did you get lucky, chico ?” She was grinning. He could tell.

“Not quite.”

She let out a short laugh. “Well, if you run out of places to go, come here before you go home. Creed and I could use some help with Mercy’s-”

The rest of her words were lost in static, and then he lost the whole connection.

It happened in the mountains. He could call her back later.

Putting his phone back in his pocket, he slipped off the interstate onto the exit-Genesee, Isaac Nachman in sight, Bleak on the horizon, and in between, him and Easy Alex finally getting where they’d always needed to be, naked in bed.

Yeah, he needed that. He’d needed it for a long time, and never more so than since he’d gotten back from his last tour of duty.

Standing in the doorway between the hostess desk and the rest of the restaurant, Dax checked out the people sitting in the bar at Mama Guadalupe’s. Then he checked his watch. Charo had made good time once he’d gotten her off the interstate. He was early.

He let his gaze go back over the people filling up the tables. The place was packed on a Friday night, with music blaring, folks dancing, drinking, eating, and talk, talk, talking. Jazz was the music, Santa Fe gourmet was the food, and Mama Guadalupe’s was obviously the place to be. Mama herself was working the tables at the front of the house, charming the diners and snapping her fingers at the waitstaff to keep them moving. Dax knew it was all for show. The young men didn’t need the added incentive. They had to work long and hard to get out of the busboy crew and into the ranks of Mama’s howlingwolf waiters. Not only did the job supply them with plenty of ready cash, there wasn’t a girl on the west side who didn’t want to date one of Guadalupe’s waiters. The job was cool, always had been.